


Set You Free

by Lucky107



Series: Sinners, Saints, and Survivors [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Child Neglect, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Murder, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Spoilers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7849060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To think this is just one moment of one hour of one day in a whole string of years to come..."</p><p>"You'll no sooner be looking back on this day, bitterly wondering why you wasted your youth with such silly ways of thinking."</p><p>"Probably."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Would You Go With Me - Josh Turner - 2006

He sits beneath the old oak tree in the shade it provides, a refuge from the hot sun, with a closed book in his lap.  His brown, boyish eyes remain fixed on her big, green ones and he stares up at the girl sitting on the crumbling stone wall.

Sitting there in the sunlight, she catches the gentle breeze that tumbles lazily across the plains and enjoys the perfect silence that rests between them.

"Y'know," she says, pointing out across the field.  "You can almost see the river from here.  It's hard to believe the world's as big as they say when we're all so small.  And then to think this is just one moment of one hour of one day in a whole string of years to come—"

Jack Marston tsks.  "You'll no sooner be looking back on this day, bitterly wondering why you wasted your youth with such silly ways of thinking, Lisette.  Just you wait."

"Probably," Lisette agrees.  "But I'm glad for it - to be able to think about the world like this.  It makes life seem so insignificant, like we can do anything we want to in this world and it won't make a damn difference... but when I'm laying on my death bed, thinking about how meaningless life really was, I'll be glad for one thing."

"That you'll die a cynic?"

"No!"  She protests, sticking out her tongue.  "For this: these little moments where we can sit and just... enjoy the world for what it is.  Our friendship, Jack.  You might not see it, but this world would be meaningless if I didn't have you to spend my afternoons with."

Jack just smiles, a shy and modest sort of smile, before placing the book down on the grass beside him.  He moves to sit beside Lisette on the old stone wall, eager to see what she sees from the hillside.

But he'll never see everything she sees.

"Just because you're smart doesn't mean you should over-analyze life," he reminds her before giving her head a rough pat.  "Let's stop wasting our time and start making something of it."

With his gaze lingering on the riverbed, Lisette knows exactly what he's trying to say and a small smile appears on her thin lips.

She jumps down from the wall and dusts off her backside.  "Last one in has to shovel the dirty horse's stable."

\- x -

Rain pours down over the Great Plains and the wind howls.

Lighting breaks across the sky in the distance as the storm rages on and it's cold.  Unable to see the vicious creatures that prey on lonesome travellers, it's an incredibly dangerous night to be out in the plains and yet there she is, looking up at him through the wind and rain with those big, green eyes full of stubbornness.

"C'mon, Lisette!"  The boy hollers over the sounds of the storm from his spot up on the family wagon.  "You'll catch a cold if you stay here any longer!"

Lisette is soaked to the bone and her blonde hair, dark with the midsummer rain, clings to her pale neck.  Even before he opens his mouth, however, he knows the response he'll receive.

"I can't do that, Jack."  Just as he thought, though she offers him a simple smile.  "Your family has been far too generous to me already - I'll never be able to repay my debt as it is, but I—"

"It's not about some debt, you idiot!"  Jack hollers once more, this time extending a hand to her down in the field.  "Just get on the damn wagon!"

Lisette bites her lip in contemplation before accepting the hand she's offered.

She's freezing.

Jack pulls her up onto the wagon with ease before taking off once again into the storm.  "When did you become such a gentleman, Mr. Marston?"

"You're gonna get yourself killed, Lisette."

"We all die eventually."

 

The warmth of the fire is a welcome one, setting a comfortable, homey atmosphere in the small family home at Beecher's Hope.  _Yes_ , she decides as she watches the flames dancing in the dark.  _This is what a real home is supposed to feel like..._

"Are you warm enough, dear?"

Abigail Marston's voice, ripe with motherly love and concern, fills the silent room like the sweet scent of honey.  Lisette can feel herself melting into the warmth of the fire, but she nods her head in a silent confirmation.  The firelight is more than she'd find at home.

"We've got plenty of spare blankets if the fire isn't enough," Abigail insists with a skeptical 'tsk' to her tone.  "It's chilly out there tonight, and you're soaked right to the bone."

The Marston family are new to the area, but they're never hesitant to open their door to Lisette as a friend of Jack's.  They're neighbors, living on the outskirts of Blackwater together, and the reputation of Lisette's father is no secret among the folks in town.

 _A smile and a 'thank you'_ , Abigail would always tell her.  _That's more than thanks enough for us, Lisette._

Jack jumps to his feet, as quick as a bunny, before insisting, "I can fetch the blankets, Ma."

"Jack's a nice boy," she says.

It's the same thing, time and time again.  She speaks so fondly of her family, and she shares those same soft eyes with Lisette, as if the girl belongs here.  But there's no way Lisette could ever feel at home at Beecher's Hope, constantly accepting the charity offered to her.

"He'll look after you while you're here, so feel free to stay as long as you need," Abigail offers quietly.  "And don't you hesitate to boss the boy around—he could use a good kick every now and again."

Lisette smiles when Abigail chuckles.

Lisette doesn't say anything, but Abigail knows why she was out in the field tonight.  She's well aware of what takes place at the Riggs' family farm, the history there and the rumors of ol' Otis' abuse.  But there are some things, no matter how kind Abigail Marston can be, that the girl will never say out loud.

She just hopes that if things escalate, or become dangerous, that Lisette will come forward and say something.  There are some things that just ain't worth the risk of her health - and the family farm is one of them.

When Jack returns with an armful of blankets, he's quick to wrap the warm fabric around the shoulders of the wet and shaking Lisette.  "You're shaking," he points out, turning Lisette's cheeks a flush shade of rose.  "You can't tell me you're not cold."

"I'm much better now," she insists, offering a modest smile.  "Thank you, Jack."

"I'll go fix up some dinner," Abigail says, excusing herself to the kitchen.  "You just wait a bit, and we'll get you fed."

Lisette dips her head.  "Thank you, Mrs. Marston."

 

Jack seats himself, this time on the rug beside Lisette, and together they enjoy the warmth of the fire.  "You still playing the harmonica, Jack?"

"I am," he confirms and Lisette's eyes light up.  "But I was hoping you might tell me a story tonight.  I've run out of things to read lately."

Try as she might, Lisette still allows herself to look disheartened.  "Are you sure...?"

"I wouldn't ask you to tell me a story if I didn't want to hear one," Jack insists with a laugh in his tone.  "Go on.  I mean it, I like the stories you tell."

Lisette Riggs is an oddity.  She has the wild and wacky imagination of a middle-aged writer and she speaks with the words of a poet, but every syllable of every story she tells vanishes as the words fall from her lips.  Having never been educated, she can't read or write for herself, so every tale she weaves disappears into the midsummer night sky.

"All right," Lisette agrees finally.  "But only until your Ma's finished with dinner."

"How about a story of the old West, then?"

The younger girl looks into the flames as if her creative spirit might catch its spark this way, igniting into something romanticized and passionately told.  But her unsteady gaze says the opposite - she's carrying a lot of weight on her shoulders right now.

Jack can see it—and that's exactly why he wants a story tonight, not music or some book.  He wants Lisette to be so swept away in her own world tonight that she forgets all about their reality.

"Long ago, when the hilly plains were vast and the sky was crystal clear, free of smoke and steam from the progress of mankind, there was a tribe of people who lived here..."

 

"C'mon kids," Abigail calls from the kitchen.  "Finish up and come for a meal, now."

"Well, they never did manage to take the land back," Lisette concludes simply.  "Or, perhaps it's that they didn't really want the land back, after it was sullied by the blood of their ancestors so thoughtlessly.  It doesn't really matter - the moral isn't in the ending, but in the lessons learned along the way."

Jack just rolls his eyes, giving Lisette a playful clasp on the shoulder as he follows her into the kitchen.


	2. Chapter 2

Birds sing a cheery tune as they flutter about, plucking fresh berries from the tops of the trees.  They're free to come and go as they please, to disappear off into that vast and endless blue sky that blankets the lonely red landscape beyond the white-washed walls, but in the end remain at Las Hermanas.

She is not so different herself, a free bird with no ties to the land or the people to hold her in any one place... and yet, after fluttering through that gate, she stays, too.

She doesn't even realise she's standing in the yard with a soaked bed sheet hanging from her hands as she watches the birds float around nonchalantly in the trees.  Not until a voice - a particularly loud and stern voice - calls out, "Sister Lisette!"

Turning with a start, Lisette confirms it's Sister Daniela.

"Are you slacking off again?"  The older, and more firm, nun calls up accusingly before her stern expression falters.  There's the smile.  "You'll be in real trouble if someone else catches you with your head in the clouds, dear."

Lisette's cheeks flush.  "I just need to hang the last of these sheets up and I'll be right down."

"Once you finish, go and fetch the children from morning prayer," Daniela says, this time a little less cheerfully.  "And don't be tardy - I'll be in real trouble if I take the fall for you again, Sister Lisette."

"Yes, yes..."

 

When Jack arrives at Las Hermanas, he hesitates before entering the convent, drinking in the whitewashed stone and clay tile walkways.  It's an oasis, hidden in the red desert among the bloodshed and the turmoil.  Fruit trees blossom in the corners of the courtyard and a small fountain in the center pumps water through in a slow trickle.

Nobody says a word as he drifts through the front gate, wide-eyed and in awe.

He figures he's in the clear until he hears a peculiar voice, like a whisper on the enchanted winds of change vacuumed within the walls of Las Hermanas.

When he turns to look, he sees a young nun sitting beneath a nearby tree and she's surrounded by young, likely orphaned children who listen to her speak with varying degrees of interest.  "And that's how Mexico came to be liberated from the bad men in Mexico City."

As if drawn to the sound of her voice, Jack drifts closer to listen.

"Not that you'll take much from that story now, but someday it will be important to reevaluate what's most important to you, as a son or a daughter of this beautiful country.  Always know what you're fighting for before you take up arms for any man."

The children speak excitedly among themselves, genuinely accepting the too-mature lesson in life they've just received.

They don't understand a word.

But Jack does - and while he approaches with hesitation, frightful that he might be mistaken, a small part of him is certain that this voice is the voice that vanished from the Great Plains three years ago, swept away on a lonely breeze. 

"Lisette Riggs...?"

Looking up from the children, the serene smile is wiped clean from the young nun's face.  "Sister is fine," she says, standing from her spot beneath the tree.  "... Have we met, traveller?"

Her eyes are filled with pain and nostalgia, even as she asks for confirmation.  "Jack," the man confirms.  "Jack Marston, from the ranch at Beecher's Hope in West Elizabeth."

"Jack..."  Lisette whispers.  "What are you doing here... in Mexico?  This is—"

"It's not your farm out in Blackwater, either.  When I went to find you, the house was empty.  I—"  But Jack casts his gaze towards the children, still within earshot of the conversation.  "—I could really ask you the same thing, but I'm not sure this is the best place to discuss it."

Lisette remains silent for a moment before offering a small nod.  "You're right."

She kneels, in dark robes that don't look like Lisette at all, and pats one of the older children on the back.  Jack isn't blind to the kindness she shows the children, not so different from the kindness once shown to her by Abigail Marston back in the day.

"Hurry along inside for your evening prayers with Sister Daniela," she encourages.  "She'll likely have some work for you to do around the kitchen while dinner is prepared."

The children of Las Hermanas are a mixture of American and Mexican blood, but they all seem to respect Lisette just fine.  Even the toughest-looking kids listen to her word without question.

With a beckon of her hand, Lisette quietly leads Jack away from prying eyes.

 

"Those clothes don't suit you," Jack remarks.

Lisette offers a defeated shrug in response.  "I had nowhere else to turn, Jack.  I couldn't stay in that house alone, not after everything that happened there, so I thought I could make a new life for myself here.  Finding the convent was a lucky break."

"The farm—?"

"And yours," she replies coldly.  "You really think I didn't try Beecher's Hope before coming all the way down to Mexico, Jack?  Where were you?"

Jack kicks at the ground with the toe of his boot and Lisette pulls back her headdress, allowing her blonde hair to fall free.  When Jack looks up from the stone rubble below, she looks just like the teenage girl he left back in West Elizabeth three years ago.

"I was being held by the government," he insists.  "They took Ma and me to get Pa to do their bidding, but by the time we were allowed to return to the farm, you were gone."

"I didn't—"

"—Pa and Uncle, and later, Ma, too..."

Suddenly Lisette knows exactly why Jack is here.  Without family, he has nowhere else to be - just the same as her.  They came here searching for something, something they don't really understand, and somehow that search has led them back to each other.

With a small frown, Lisette says, "So, you're all alone now, too."

Jack lifts his face, then, to ask, "And what about you?  I thought you weren't going to let that farm go, no matter what?  I know you would have died for that land—"

"I couldn't do it, Jack.  I just... couldn't do it anymore."

When she came to Las Hermanas, Lisette thought she might be able to leave all of that behind.  She was supposed to release the confining chains of her past in return for a fresh start.  A world where nobody knows her name.

This, of all things, was not supposed to happen - Jack was not supposed to enter back into her life.

Not here.

Not like this.

"If it hurts, you don't have to pretend," Jack says, just like he used to say when she was a girl.  And just like that, when Lisette looks up at him with those big, green eyes, she's fourteen again.  "You don't have to pretend anymore, Lisette."

"You remember my Pa, Otis?"

Jack nods silently.

"I got real sick, real feverish, and I couldn't leave 'cause it was raining outside... but Pa, he said some things to me that night.  Things I don't think I was supposed to hear, things I didn't want to hear.  You know, Pa never laid a hand on me, but I think the words were somehow worse."

"What did he say, Lisette?"  Jack asks, trying not to put the cart before the horse in jumping to conclusions.  He can tell the memories are painful for her, but she can't run forever.

"He wasn't... he wasn't seeing me, Jack," the young nun explains.  "When he looked at me, his eyes were clear, but then he said, ' _You're a disgrace to this family, you filthy whore, 'n' you don't deserve her._ '  I think he saw my mother in me that night."

Only then does Lisette's breath hitch in her throat and Jack knows the tears are inevitable, so he offers a comforting hand at first.  The dark fabric of Lisette's robes are warm beneath his hands, soaking up the fading sunlight, but soon he pulls her into a tight embrace and gives her the privacy she needs to fall apart completely.

"Oh, Jesus, Jack," she whispers, choked with tears.  "They hanged my cousin for her murder, but they hanged an innocent man.  It wasn't Porter who killed her—it was Otis."

 

By the time the emotion passes into a contemplative silence, daylight is gone.

Lisette takes some time to clean herself up, both embarrassed and slightly intimidated to be seen as the mess she's become, but Jack is resourceful.  He wipes the remaining tears from her cheek without thinking and helps her to fix her headdress on straight.

"The last time I saw my father, I told him I was sorry - sorry for all the things he went through with Josephine," she confesses quietly and this time there are no tears.  "It was his first sober night in over a decade and while I don't think he was completely aware, he felt something that night.  For a brief moment in time, we were family for the first time."

"Lisette..."

But Lisette beckons for Jack to follow her out into the halos of orange candle light that guide their path through the courtyard.

"It will be dinner time soon," she says, offering him a small smile.  In that smile, the girl who was always so stubborn with him plays peek-a-boo on her worn and weathered face.  "You might stay for the night.  The people here are kind and will open their home to you without question, so long as you mind your manners while you're here."

Jack thinks, if only just for a moment, that things could return to the way they had once been.  "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

"I won't press you for details on why you're here, but a good night's rest and a proper meal won't hurt you before heading back out," she adds.  "You've always been so fond of taking on jobs way too big for you, Mr. Marston.  Trying to grow up before your time."

"I never took you for the preaching type, Sister."

Lisette laughs for the first time in three years and Jack smiles.  "Me either, Jack.  Me either."

\- x -

Kneeling alone before the large cross, she doesn't pray - instead she marvels at the large structure from below, admiring the hollow dawn light that filters through the window in a rainbow of colours.  And when the church door opens somewhere at her back, she doesn't even blink.

She already knows who it is.

"Sister Daniela said you might be here."  Jack's voice is calm and patient.  "I worry about you, Lisette.  You've been through a lot... it's changed you."

"You and me both," Lisette insists before slowly standing from her spot before the cross.  "I don't think either of us are who we once were.  Not anymore."

That thought scares them both.

"I don't want to let go of those memories," Jack admits.  "I don't want to let go of everything I've left behind.  You're the only thing I have left - the only thing to survive this long - and I don't want to let go of the chance to go back to that."

It takes less than a second for Lisette to run down the aisle of the church, throwing her arms around the troubled gunslinger in a desperate embrace that he eagerly returns.  His strength is foreign to her, having only ever known him as the scrawny boy who liked to read, but he's grown up a lot since they last met.

That modest, naive heart is the only unchanged thing in the boy she used to know—and she doesn't want to give that up, either.

"Come with me," Jack whispers.  "We can live like we used to."

"Jack, I—"

When he releases her from their embrace and begins his trek towards the front gate, her voice hitches in her throat.  The world is so cold.  Even in a world full of good-natured and tender people like Las Hermanas, the world is cold without the touch of a familiar hand.

Tracing each step of his retreating back, hundreds of jumbled and unspoken words die on her lips.  All that comes is a pitiful, breathless gasp.

"Wait!"

Removing her headdress, Lisette runs after the boy with all of her strength, leaving only a lingering shadow behind in the presence of that looming cross.


End file.
